Trans-con BusinessElite Upgrades from Delta

Chris at TravelSkills reported yesterday that Delta has quietly introduced an upgrade benefit for Platinum and Diamond Medallions on its premium BusinessElite trans-con product from JFK. I did not say “re-introduced” for a reason – this isn’t the same as before. While I was not directly impacted by the change, you might remember the little dust up that was created when Delta removed traditional upgrade benefits for Medallion SkyMiles members on these routes a few months ago. Now, as The Weekly Flyer notes, Delta will add Platinums or Diamonds to the upgrade list 6 hours before departure, and you clear into BusinessElite, load factor permitting. Companion upgrades are not available.

I reached out to a Delta spokesperson for details and they replied “While the policy has not changed, we have now begun to award our top medallion customers upgrades on those flights during slower travel periods or as the operation permits.” I asked if this was an experiment and if there were plans for this to become a published benefit of the SkyMiles program, to which the reply was that there is no time limit and no plans to publish it as a benefit.

What happened? Airlines are numbers oriented, and you can bet Delta was monitoring what was happening on these flights. Further, as noted by Chris, jetBlue is rolling out a premium product on its JFK trans-con routes. I’d be leery of judging profitability of the premium cabin based on a sample of seat maps. I suspect the bottom line comes down to being competitive, and someone at Delta looking at the numbers and asking why high-level elite Medallions should not have priority for empty seats ahead of employee travelers? We’ll see how it goes.

Marshall Jackson is an aviation enthusiast and avid cruiser. Throughout high school and college he continued to pursue his dream of becoming a commercial airline pilot obtaining his commercial pilot’s license at age 19. After college Marshall started his professional flying career as a Jetstream, and later Saab first officer with a regional airline. Grounded by Type 1 Diabetes in 1996, Marshall transitioned into operations management at one of the world’s largest airlines performing safety and compliance audits at airline and vendor facilities worldwide. Applying the skills gained in that position, Marshall moved into airport operations management at one of his airline’s busiest airports. After 10 years in the airline business, Marshall moved on to a new career that includes plenty of travel and plenty of cruises, and that’s just the way he likes it.

I’m dying to see if I’m a “…top medallion customer…” I guess the most important number would be how much I spent with them in 2013 ($12k-$13k) and how much I’ve spent with them this year ($10k). I’m Platinum, but never excessively so. It’s not that much money relative to what I imagine others spend. For me it’s a lot, and at times it’s a pain to fly Delta when other airlines are much more convenient (LAX-MDW, LAX-DFW, etc…). It’s also worth noting that a big chunk of that money was spent flying KLM (like at least half of last year).

The bad thing about SM2015 is that those KLM flights won’t count for Delta MQDs unless they’re on Delta tickets.

10K is more than I spent last year, but not by much. The way things are going this year, I’m going to spend more…. I’ll make Platinum again for 2015. Who knows what happens in 2016? But I’m surely going to try. The difference between Platinum and Gold is truly noticeable.

Garrett

Hey, thanks for the response! I’m not worried about the MQDs since I spend as close to $30k on my Amex Reserve. I spend up to the first bonus, then switch my spending elsewhere. I think I’ll make Platinum again this year–if it doesn’t look like it by September, I’ll throw in a mileage run or two…usually can score some sweet deals on Z fares around Thanksgiving since none of us travel internationally during that period. Last year I got LAX-AMS for $2200 on KLM. Not cheap, but definitely a deal!